Godbond

by Nancy Springer

  I turned my fanged mare, protecting their retreat as best I could with the sword, taking wounds—though I knew they were lesser wounds than most of those suffered around me. Some shitbottom Otter pricked me with a spear in my thigh just above the knee. One of Pajlat’s raiding scum placed a bleeding whip-weal on my head.

  And then someone slashed my mare’s throat from jawbone to jawbone, nearly severing her head, so that she sank stone dead to the ground beneath me, and I stood mountless amid hard battle.

  And in the darkened air above me I saw the many green-shades dancing like the swaying spirit-dancers around the autumn soulfires, many more than the fighters remaining on the field below. And seeing them, I felt myself to be near death, far too near … I would die soon, and not at my bond brother’s side. So many had died, too many.… I saw Tyonoc, Kela, Leotie, Tyee, greenly shimmering. My throat closed at the sight of Tyee bodiless in air, and my sword sagged in my hand.

  “Fight, Dan!” His voice cracked like a lash. “My pigheaded brother, where is your stubbornness now, when your tribe needs it worst? Have our people come here to die for his, that you should despair?”

  I lifted Alar and wielded her, but sluggishly. “Tyee,” I whispered to the wind, “you were right, my brother. Sakeema lies dead somewhere, long since meat for worms.”

  “No whit!” My father’s voice this time, angry. “Have I not told you Sakeema lives?”

  “Then he is our betrayer,” I said.

  And Tyonoc said, “I have reared a fool.” I had never heard him speak so harshly; it stung me, but thrust me deeper into despair. “A buffoon! You lunkhead, my son, do you not yet know yourself, what you are? Have you forgotten again your own name?”

  And the dark cloud of Mahela lay over all the world, so it seemed to me, like a vast devourer of sky, swallowing me along with all the rest. And my limbs felt as heavy as if a devourer big as the world swaddled me. Alar flashed before my eyes, protecting me of her own accord, but it seemed to me that I saw only darkness, I felt as if I could scarcely move, could scarcely breathe, despair wrapped me so tightly in its chill embrace.

  “Your name!”

  I scarcely heard him. A devourer of my own making had me, holding me in deathly swaddling, intent on taking me, I had to withstand it … and in that most lonely of struggles, all foolish fears fell away from me, all my terrors were gone but this most primal one, that I would be smothered, drowned, unsouled, lost—in the final darkness.…

  Center. I had to center in self.

  Amid darkness and battle clamor I listened for the stirrings of my own soul. It would have been easier to find a midge in the night.

  I was—a Red Hart.… No, no longer. Not entirely. I was—a hunter.… No. Hunters kill the creatures of Sakeema, eat the meat. I was—a storyteller.… But all my tales ended in doom. I was—one who yearned for the god. But Sakeema was dead, or a villain, many times I had declared it to be so. Unto myself, then. I was—was—

  I could not remember my name.

  A devourer made of cloud gloom and bloodshed and my own desperation had me in its grip, and I knew I could not let myself be afraid, or I would be—no more.… But, oddly, I felt angry, furious. Hot anger ached in my chest, my shoulders. Why was this always happening to me, that I could not remember my own name?

  “Say the name, my son!”

  I wanted to curse him, curse the world, curse fate. It was not fair, that I could not remember. Was not my name, whatever it was, blast it, was it not as good as anyone’s? As good as Kor’s, and Tassida’s—

  Something sang through me at the thought of them, some nameless passion. And out of the darkness within my own despairing mind came the faint, spiritous voice of a song.

  Two there were who came before

  To brave the deep for three:

  The rider who flees,

  The seeker who yearns,

  And he who is king by the sea.

  Kor, the sea king. Tass, the rider. And by my body, how I loved and yearned for them both.

  I was the seeker.

  I was the one who could love and quest forever.

  I was Darran, Darran, Darran!

  The name surged through me with a power such as the sun must own, rising. I shouted, I flung up my arms, and all was light, my own light. The skin of my face, my bare chest and arms, all parts of me glowed with a sheen as of yellow lightning, and I felt my long hair lifting like wings around my head, and in my hand I gripped the hilt of a shining sword. Stormwind was blowing, not Mahela’s but my own.

  Horses neighed in terror of me, threw their riders and ran away. Good, the creatures at least had saved themselves for the time.… The warriors who stood nearest me screamed like the horses or fell back with widened eyes. The Otters prostrated themselves, for they were a reverent folk, and clever. Darran would have slain them had they come in his way. I had been mistaken to think that Darran would not kill. For the sake of war, no, I would not. But for Korridun’s sake …

  There were things Darran could do, at once, to aid him. “Sylkies!” I called, my voice rising like thunder roar. “Sylkies from the sea, come to us!”

  And at once I saw them, flowing like a freak tide up and over the lip of the seaside cliffs. The tall, loose-jointed, sharp-toothed sea warriors, wet and shining, naked but for the pelts they wore on their narrow shoulders, weaponless but for their own weirdness. They had needed only my word to let the uncanny wave of them wash into the battle. They caught up the weapons of dead men in their long-fingered hands, they surged against the enemy. Their distant kindred, Kor’s people, raised a shout and fought with new strength. Good. But Kor, where was Kor?

  I had to come to him, quickly. I had been gone from him too long.

  “Where is my brother?” I shouted to the greenshades hovering under Mahela’s hand of darkness, but they did not answer me. I could no longer see my father’s face, or Tyee’s, or the face of any spirit I knew. Of their own accord they would not have left me, I felt sure of it. Mahela’s tempest had whirled them away. Mahela would take away the world, when she could.

  And though no enemy came near me, everywhere around me warriors fought with each other, stubbornly, stupidly, everywhere I could see the fighting, the blood, the dying.…

  I could not see Kor. Fear squeezed my heart. In her fair womanly form, on a devourer’s back, Mahela flew overhead and laughed. “Shoot me with an arrow, Dan,” she mocked, and I saw her glance off toward the Hold, and I also looked that way.

  Sakeema help us all.

  Alone, Kor faced Pajlat at the entry of the Hold.

  Alone, apart from the battle where the sylkies might have aided him—I myself stood nearer. And afoot—whether unhorsed as I was or by choice, Kor stood afoot, and Pajlat had just sufficient honor to meet him in like wise. Or perhaps it was the steep slope of sliding gravel that had decided him. Few horses could have kept their footing there in any event. Small disadvantage to Pajlat, for even afoot and downslope, he still loomed taller than Kor, lout that he was. I saw the flash of Kor’s sword, the lift of Pajlat’s club, half again Zaneb’s length, and madly I plunged that way, through eddies of the battle.

  Sakeema, if only my bond brother would not be killed before I could come to him.… Echo of a plea I had pleaded before.

  When he was well in strength Kor made a fierce and canny fighter on foot, lithe, deft to evade and to take advantage. I think I would not have feared so much for him, even against a hulk like Pajlat, on any other day. But doom hung in the air, and Kor’s wound had made him blood-drained and stiff, not able to move strongly or quickly or with his usual skill. Even as I thought it I saw him take a shrewd blow in the ribs that nearly felled him—I would not be able to come to him in time!

  I roared aloud in rage and anguish, and lightning flew up from my flying hair, sun-yellow lightning that clashed with Mahela’s of sea-green hue so that both burst into splinters and thunder. Warriors and devourers shrank back from the fire of my face, and Mahela’s black fist of cloud g
rew battered and shapeless before the force of my own stormwind. No one dared face me, not even Cragsmen, but I cared nothing for my own power, I wanted only to save Kor—

  But a warrior blocked my way. Before me, grinning his cold grin, dripping knife in hand, stood the one enemy who could defy me.

  Ytan.

  Like a flame burning in a still place I stopped before him. Overhead I heard a thunder-low laugh. Mahela was watching.

  Ytan, my brother, born of my dead father, my dead mother. Of all my Red Hart family, the only one who remained to me. Ytan … and eerily in my own silence I remembered happy days, gone like a dream, when we were boys together and he would wrestle with me and sometimes let me win, when he would sleep by my side as the tan deerhound puppies lay on top of us both.… Gone as if they had never been. There stood Ytan, raising a blackstone knife to sink it into my throat, knowing full well that heart would not let me kill him—

  And beyond, as if in a nightmare lightning-flash under a storm-black sky, I saw Kor crouching in front of Pajlat, white-faced, defeated, clutching his side, his own blood welling red between his fingers. And Pajlat held the stone blade with which to sever the head he would tie to his riding pelt—

  I screamed, not a warrior’s yell or yet a scream of fear but a cry more than half sob, and I raised my sword and slashed open from throat to belly the one who stood in my way. And Ytan fell, and the devourer within him flew out, gut-gray, and rippled up to circle with the others. I did not see, for I saw only Kor, Kor, and my heart was broken, for I had killed my brother, and even as I sprang forward I knew the moment I had tarried had made me too late to save my friend of friends—

  I was Kor, with Kor, my own death loomed, for my heart was his heart, I felt his pain and fear. And though he did not move his mouth or turn aside his eyes as Pajlat lifted the knife, I, Darran, screamed aloud, and the scream formed a word.

  “Sakeema!” I cried.

  In greatest need I called on my god, and Sakeema came.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was splendid, glorious, the young warriors told me later, to see her coming, bursting out of spruce forest on the back of the great stag, its antlers embracing her and the lovelocks of her tawny hair flying behind her with the speed of its running, the sword in her left hand—though she was not to need it—and her face, pale, from the pain of her injured arm perhaps, and achingly beautiful, and rapt, as if she had seen a vision. All the Otter River folk threw down their weapons and fell prone, hiding their faces when they saw her, for they knew that Sakeema had come to the battle, riding on a mighty stag, lacking only her retinue of wolves.

  The Cragsmen and the Fanged Horse raiders fought on, for they cared nothing for Tassida on a red hart.

  I had not seen, for my back was to the mountains, my eyes on Pajlat and Kor as I sprang forward, a few paces too far away.… But I felt the rush as something of shining red-brown sprang past me and bore down Pajlat in a single leap.

  So it was that I saw her come, when Birc, the stag who had once been Kor’s guardsman, when Birc sprang past me, harried Pajlat to the ground and held him shrieking there as he drove his antlers to the heart.

  And Kor crouched yet alive, his head bent to his knees—I could see his taut back and shoulders, but not his face. When I kneeled by his side, he seemed not to know I was there. His right hand pressed tightly over his wound—I could not handbond him. Zaneb lay at his feet, her light dimmed.

  “Kor,” I whispered, and I put my arms around him, scarcely daring to touch him for fear of causing him further pain. His head turned toward me without lifting, but anguish would not let him open his eyes.

  At a small distance, Tass sat swaying on her strange mount’s back, reeling as if she would fall.

  Tass, I mindspoke her, I could not help it, my heart was so full. Tass, beloved, come quickly, heal him, the wound is deep, he will die!

  I saw her stiffen on Birc’s back, and I went rigid in fear, gut-certain that she would bolt, that I had sent her fleeing from us again, fool, dolt, wantwit that I was, with no more sense than to mindspeak her—but she braced her one good hand against the stag’s shoulder and pushed herself off him, landing with a small cry of pain before she came unsteadily over to where I kneeled, and then I knew that she had come out of fear and into courage, sometime on her hard journey to join us.

  Tassida. The healer who would no longer flee. Kor, the king by the sea. And I, the dreamwit. The three of us crouched together, clustered like the three petals of a frail flower, while the battle swirled near at hand.… Even unhorsed as they were, the Fanged Horse raiders were taking a hard toll of the sylkies. They badly wished to break through to Kor, to me. A sea maiden fell, cut down by a whip blow—then Birc lunged and sank his antlers deep in a marauder’s chest, tossed the man away amid a splattering of blood. He turned to the others, but they did not await him. Sea people and deer man fighting side by side, it was too much for them. They fell back.

  Tass sheathed Marantha, kneeling by Kor.

  He did not even look at her, so much was he taken away by pain. His face had gone gray, his eyes were slitted in pain, his body was knotted like a fist, fighting the sickening weakness of his mortal wound. Tass laid her left hand softly on his hunched and trembling shoulders, and at once his agony lessened—I could see how his breathing eased. His eyes closed more smoothly. But he had not moved his hands from the wound in his side.

  Kor?

  Help me—help me lie down, Dan.

  Together Tassida and I eased him to the ground, and I slipped Zaneb into the sheath at his side. “Try again, Tass,” I urged her.

  She cradled her broken arm in her left hand and laid her right hand on his chest, then placed the other beside it, and I watched, hand to my mouth. But there was small change. Kor lay and panted quietly in muted pain, and Tassida took up her arm in her hand again. Her pain, little less than his. Her pale face, very quiet, very beautiful, and in a low voice she said, “Dan, he will mend, given time. I seem to be a healer, as you have said, but I am not yet a god. It was at least partly your tears, before, when all wounds were sent away without a scar.”

  “It might have been,” I told her. “I am Darran. But I know you, stonebearer, and you are indeed the god.”

  She stared, too weary or too much in pain to shout at me as she would once have done. “No more than you are,” she averred.

  Perhaps she understood, perhaps she said it to quarrel with me. But it was true. And she could have declared the same of Korridun.

  “Look yonder,” said a voice tight with pain—Kor’s. His sea-dark eyes were open, gazing into the distance.

  I looked, and felt my blood chill. The snowpeaks were stirring, melting, sliding toward the sea. Beyond the edge of the cloud, sky was darkening. Somewhere the sun was dying.

  “Mahela has seen you coming, Tass,” Kor added starkly.

  “Tass,” I demanded, “are you ready?”

  Kneeling, I gazed levelly at her. She stared back at me, and I saw the muscles of her jaw move, she had tightened it so.

  Tass, I mindspoke her, and then aloud I said softly but formally, “Tass. I am Darran, the seeker, and I have sought you long. Beside me is Korridun, the sea king. Have you also found self, and courage? If you are willing to venture, tell us now your true name.”

  She moistened her lips with her tongue, then whispered, “Tass. The rider.”

  For she also had misnamed herself, years before. She had called herself horseback rider, but she had been born to ride the stag.

  Darran’s inwit told me what to do. I took her right hand, the one that dangled helplessly below her splint, and I lifted Kor’s bloodied right hand away from the wound in his side—he and Tass both cried out at me, I was hurting them both. And as gently as I could I guided their right hands together, sword scar to sword scar, so that they handbonded. Tassida’s eyes opened wide with wonder.

  “The arm,” she said. “It has stopped aching.”

  The taut lines of Kor’s face sm
oothed, and he made a small sound of amazement, for pain had left him. I wished I could let him rest, but there was no time. “Kor,” I said urgently, “you have to stand. We must face Mahela.”

  Tassida’s handbond gave him strength to do it. Together the two of them rose and stood side by side with reasonable steadiness, and I stumbled up to stand with them. Quickly I took her other hand in mine, sword scar pressed to sword scar. My whip cuts ceased to hurt me, ceased to bleed.

  A soft glow from Alar, Marantha, Zaneb, from the three jewels, yellow, amaranthine, sundown red. Within the three of us, the stonebearers, a waiting hush. Nothing more.

  A devourer swooped low overhead. On its back rode Mahela, gloriously gowned and silently laughing, as a cormorant will. “So, little daughter!” she called out, her voice wild and glad in the tempest wind, “I need not have feared you, after all! Your power is fit to save only yourself, it seems. Yourself and these two handsome cocks.”

  The mountains were leveling, dying with a roar louder than Mahela’s thunder. Numbly I saw Birc standing near us to guard us, blood glistening on the tips of his antlers like the red buds of springtime on a bare tree … the trees would never bloom again, they were dying with the world. The very sun, dying. In the air the sounds of dying, warriors still striving on the headland below, fighting as if under an evil spell, in thrall to demons, their screams rising with the stench of death on the wind.

  “Nearly all those yet alive in the dryland world are on yon battlefield,” Mahela jeered, “and they can think of nothing but to kill each other! I will have them all before much longer, and you three may stand and watch, my chick and my cocks. And when all else is done, I will put out the stars as if they were slaves’ eyes.”

  It is because … because I am yet afraid, that she can do as she will.

  Tass, mindspeaking, she who had never willingly mind-spoken me before. And Kor also heard, as he should not have been able to hear, and he understood. You are not so very much afraid, he told her, and I could hear him as well, for we three were as of one mind.